


Not Enough

by magikfanfic



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Backstory, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pre-Rogue One, probably not canon compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-26
Updated: 2017-04-26
Packaged: 2018-10-24 07:14:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10736772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magikfanfic/pseuds/magikfanfic
Summary: The temple does not fall all at once, though he thinks it would have been better that way, quicker, cleaner. No, it is a slow thing like water eating into the side of a cliff. Little by little the Imperials chip away at everything that they are, everything that they have, until the foundation is too spindly to support the weight, until it falls in on itself, top heavy and reeling.2017 Spiritassassin weekPrompt 3: Hurt/comfort





	Not Enough

**Author's Note:**

> Look. My purpose in doing this and telling myself I would manage a fic for all these prompts was to do drabbles. They just keep spiraling out of my control. And, like, almost all of them could probably launch sequels but *throws hand in the air* no one has time for that right now.
> 
> Also the poem in this is by e.e. Cummings, which, look, I know that Star Wars exists "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away", but my Cummings book was *right there* and I couldn't be arsed to make up my own poem so. It is what it is.
> 
> Also there could probably be more comfort in this, but the prompts take me where the prompts take me and I don't argue.

The temple does not fall all at once, though he thinks it would have been better that way, quicker, cleaner. No, it is a slow thing like water eating into the side of a cliff. Little by little the Imperials chip away at everything that they are, everything that they have, until the foundation is too spindly to support the weight, until it falls in on itself, top heavy and reeling. It does not end with a fire or an explosion. There is not a great battle waged between the Guardians and the Empire. It is a waning, as of a moon, until there is just a sliver left. It is easy to force a handful of the disenfranchised out. It is easy to make them give their ground, their livelihood, their world. It should not be, but it is. It is easier than Baze ever wants to admit because it is a shame heavier than everything else in the universe. He who is a mountain. He who is a pillar of faith onto himself. He should not have been moved. 

He should have died with the fall of the temple.

It is as simple as that.

He doesn’t know where the other Guardians went, the ones who fled before or the ones who left at the end. It was part of the plan that the High Masters had concocted and set in motion when the first white boots marched into their sacred halls, when the first foreign, uninitiated hands touched their kyber, smearing something yellow and sickly across the Force with every gesture, every motion. Guardians and masters and even some of the higher initiates were sent away with scrolls and datapads and kyber, sent to hide, to find homes on other planets, to lie low until the danger had passed. They never considered that it might never pass, that it would linger, a watermark from high rain on the walls. The idea was that the Whills could not be allowed to disappear into history, it could not be forgotten. 

They all knew what had happened to the Jedi, after all. Hadn’t they felt it? The knowledge that crawled across the Force, slouching toward them until it was at their doorstep, until there was no more denying it entry into their hearts and minds. Baze thought it would be something more. Baze thought it would mean something more, but it hadn’t. It had been too large, too much. In the grand scheme of things, it had been unfathomable, unfeelable. If they had stopped to feel it, to put their hands in the water of its sorrow, they all would have drowned. The only thing to do, in the end, was to walk past it like something ugly on the street, ignore it until it was no longer there.

Even though that had never been the way of the Whills.

It was the first loss, the first crack in the bedrock of their temple, the most dangerous crack of all, splintering outward to creep into everything else, destroying them from the inside out.

Baze should have noticed it, should have seen it, but his eyes were fettered, hung heavy with the weight of all the death that was palpable in the Force, almost a taste on his tongue, a cloying thickness in the back of his throat that kept him from swallowing anything more substantial than water for a week. He meditated the entire time, trying to discern the reasons for it and coming up empty handed every time. All is as the Force wills it so there had to be a will, there had to be a why, but no matter how far he reached, how low he sunk, how much he disappeared into himself and into the stream, he found nothing, cupped hands around bloodied water and rose back to awareness sobbing, eyes throbbing. 

The first crack was a tragedy too large to be encompassed, too heinous to be understood. 

The second crack was the undermining of faith, the first skittering tongues of real doubt. Not the sort of doubt that fueled the questions, the lively debates that they would get into when gathered together, clustered in the library or the common areas or the courtyard, the conversations that could go all night long delving into the strange particulars of the Force and how it worked, the way it flowed. That was productive doubt, one that strengthened faith because it allowed the chance to explore the depths of it and realize that everyone came at it a different way. It was a sharing and an understanding as much of each other as of the Force itself, which was a part of all of them anyway, the one folded into the other, inseparable back then.

No, this doubt was more than that. This doubt was something lumbering in the darkness like the stories that the children of NiJedha told about a monster who stalked the streets in the weeks leading up to the rainy season so you couldn’t look outside, couldn’t go outside, for fear of being eaten up, your blood and bones and bits food for the rain itself. This doubt ate away at the foundations of their hearts until some of the faithful simply walked away, said nothing, argued nothing, just set their things down and turned their backs as if it had never meant anything, as if it had no weight, as it if was that easy.

Baze wishes it was that easy. Then maybe he could free himself as well, unwrap the bonds around his wrists, untie the knots around his heart, all the little ways in which the Force, in which the faith, will seep into you and make you its beloved. He wonders what it feels like to be carved out and empty. He wonders if it feels better than the slowly dawning realization that he has failed the life he swore to never fail, to always protect, to his dying day, but it has fallen while he lives.

And that is the worst blasphemy of them all. That is worse than turning his back. That is worse than just walking away. 

To love, but not enough to make a difference.

He does not know when Chirrut Imwe returns to Jedha. The Force does not tell him in any way that he can heed, though he thinks that he should have known, might have known if he had been paying attention to anything, if he had not just been drifting from one thing to another, one day to another, an endlessly, unceasing repetition of days such that he cannot discern one from the next except by what bruises and cuts are new, what small thing he has gained or lost. Baze has always been bad about rising from the depths of himself, and this is never as true as when he is in pain. 

He does not know when Chirrut returns to Jedha. If he had, would he have sought him out? Would he have brought him poetry and trinkets and smiles and his favorite foods from the market? Like the way that he did when they were very young and courting, before Baze even really knew that he was courting just that he wanted to see that smile, hear that laugh, have Chirrut look so grateful and pleased and put his hand on his cheek just so while asking him to share the food or read the book to him or show him what the trinket did. Or would he have stayed away purposefully, convinced that he was too dim to stand in the light of the other, not enough to be seen, not enough to be known? Not enough to be loved.

Sometimes, to soothe himself in the middle of the night when it is cold and quiet and he can never stop thinking, can never stop feeling the sad, abandoned pulse of the kyber where it lingers alone in the caves under the ground, searching, calling and finding no one, Baze remembers their first kiss. The attempt of their first kiss. Chirrut giggling and eager, bouncing on the balls of his feet like normal but never stepping away, leaning bodily against him, chest to chest, his head tipped up, his eyes dancing like he was anticipating something that Baze didn’t know about, some Force vision that was beyond the reach of his own meager abilities. Baze altogether shy and bashful and wanting but not knowing if what he wanted and what Chirrut wanted existed in the shared space of their Venn diagram. And Chirrut prattling constantly like normal except that he kept pausing oddly, in the middle of sentences, to lick his lips, repeatedly, purposefully, a signal that Baze had no way to interpret because it wasn’t in his physical language. Both of them getting increasingly agitated for something they didn’t know the word for, Baze’s arms looped around Chirrut’s waist, stroking small circles on his lower back, and Chirrut’s hands flitting across his face and his chest and his neck and his arms, the touches all light and fire, burning, leaving after images of sensation in their wake. Until Chirrut had growled, that petulant, exasperated little noise that he would make in the middle of particularly long and uninteresting lectures, pulled Baze down by his ears and kissed him. And there had been too much teeth and too much haste and neither of them had known quite what to do with their lips and their tongues, but it had been. The best. 

Until the next kiss. And the one after. Each kiss better than the one before, learning all the ways to make the other moan, what they liked best, what to do more of and what not to do again. Years spent like that, each kiss a blessing, each kiss a gift.

Except the last one.

Sometimes, to torture himself in the middle of the night when it is cold and quiet and he can never stop thinking, can never stop resurrecting the sad ghosts of his brothers and sisters who have fled the temple and will never again wander its halls, now battered and empty, Baze remembers their last kiss. The attempt of their last kiss. Chirrut uncharacteristically sullen, arms folded across his chest, refusing to look at him, refusing to even turn his head toward him, but their knees pressed together where Baze was in the lotus position across from him, watching him, praying for him to pay attention again because silence from Chirrut was worse than any tedious sound in the universe. Baze hadn’t know what to do, what to say, rested his palms on his knees, the tips of his fingers lightly on Chirrut’s, watching, waiting. And Chirrut, who seemed to have never been taught about personal space, who would wrap his arms and legs and fingers about Baze constantly, sleep on his back or his chest, push his lips and his face into the nape of his neck during lectures, rest his fingers dangerously high on Baze’s thigh in the dining hall, just touch him everywhere always, made no move to reciprocate Baze’s shy, idle touches, which was how he knew. That Chirrut was worlds away. That Chirrut might never come back to him. And then the kiss that he pressed, quick, dry, just his lips against Chirrut’s cheek, which he didn’t turn into, didn’t turn into something long and drawn and lingering but just left there as though he had been kissed by just anyone, as though the kiss had meant nothing at all. Not the best. Not enough for even a hint of acknowledgment. 

And how Baze had sat there for a good ten minutes after the kiss waiting, wondering, with Chirrut saying nothing at all until he eventually left because he couldn’t take it anymore, slipped out of the room quietly, quickly, trying not to cry. Spent the next day in the library, huddled into the oldest sections with the scrolls yellowing at the edges, smelling the scent of ink and linen that lingered, surrounding himself in the warmth of words written by hand instead of the glow of the data pads. He did not go to see Chirrut off because he couldn’t handle another moment of that silence, of those not looks and the way that Chirrut didn’t touch him. The only parting gifts he gave were that shadow of a kiss and a journal full of carefully handwritten poems pulled from a vast assortment of texts the temple had. A gift too sentimental by far but easier to give when he was just tucking it into Chirrut’s bag when the other wasn’t looking, when he wouldn’t have to face him when he found it and see the way his smile went from amused to glowing in under two seconds. Or how he did not smile. Not at all. Which would have broken him even more.

Baze has no idea that Chirrut has returned until the day he shows up at the temple like a phantom, like a memory that rises from the dust to gather form again, like silent retribution for everything that Baze has done, everything he has failed to accomplish, been lax in protecting. He appears like a punishment sent by the Force itself to wreck its own brand of justice on Baze for what he lacks and how that wanting has resulted in the universe steadily tipping onto its side, just falling over, tumbling heedlessly into the abyss because Baze was not strong enough to rest it on his shoulders and keep it upright like the man in one of the old myths.

It is mid-day and the sun is high, hot, for the cold season has yet to blow across the stones of the temple, and he has not decided what he will do then, isn’t sure if he will do anything at all other than hunker as far down into the lower levels of the temple as he can in an attempt to keep warm thanks to the thermal springs that continue on about their business, altogether unperturbed by the confusion of the world above them. The temple might have fallen, but the gravitational hold it has on him has not lessened in the slightest. He still feels it, the sharp tug in his belly, the twist in his head, when he tries to go too far from it. A week after the fall, after they were forced out with blasters, after the temple was raided, art destroyed and statues knocked over, the remaining texts taken, much of the kyber acquired, Baze left NiJedha, struck out into the sands, thinking that he could live there, he could persist on the edges, away from it all. He could have lived without the hustle of the city any day, especially the ever present reminders of the Empire, the Stormtroopers and the ships and the Imperial stamps on the “approved” market stalls. He could have gone forever without all of that buzzing continually about him. Could live in silence. Could live only with only himself, inside of himself.

What he could not do without, however, turned out to be the feel of the temple, the weight of it, the stones and the courtyard and the hum of the kyber embedded in the walls and the steps, pieces too small for anyone to find, for anyone to have any use for it at all but which sang and whispered to him nonetheless. So he had returned, crept back in the middle of the night, used his knowledge of the twists and the turns and the halls and the hidden places to linger there, to live there without anyone being the wiser. 

He should have known Chirrut would find him. If anyone could ever find him, it would be Chirrut. Chirrut always had.

Baze is in the courtyard painstakingly reconstructing an interior wall that no one save him will likely see again, that the Empire might decide to simply destroy, to blow the temple up once and for all, save themselves the trouble of looters and beggars deciding to make it their home now that the Guardians are not there to keep it. Save for him, and he barely qualifies for the title, had only just completed his training, just taken the oath when disaster struck, when the crack appeared and the spider webbing spread. There is no sound of an approach, though Baze is not sure whether he would have marked it had there been anyway. One moment he is alone, stacking stones, and the next a shadow has fallen across him as if a cloud has slid over the rays of the sun.

When he looks up, blinking, frowning, concern pulling at the corners of his lips and marring his brow, Baze thinks he is dreaming, thinks it must be a mirage, thinks the Force has finally decided what his punishment should be. 

How else can he explain the image of Chirrut, hands folded peacefully behind his back, standing at the top of the stairs, looking down at him, casting the shadow over him? Chirrut has left, after all, took the station he was offered worlds away, the one that Baze would not, could not accompany him on because it was not Jedha, because Baze could not consider the idea of leaving Jedha, of leaving home. Yet he also hadn’t been able to find the breath inside of himself to tell Chirrut that he wanted him to stay. Chirrut with his big dreams, and his desire to see the stars, to talk to other people about the Force, to exchange ideas. How could Baze deny him anything? How could Baze ever consider keeping him when Chirrut was capable of so much more? 

And when the temple was fading away, little by little, Baze had been so glad that Chirrut was not there, that Chirrut was not in danger. He had accepted the fact that he would never set eyes on his lover again, never bask in his touch, never hear his voice; it had hurt, but he had come to terms with it. He had been okay with it because he hoped, wished, that it meant Chirrut was in no danger. Chirrut with his quick wit and free smiles and good heart would do well anywhere, with anyone. People would trip over themselves to help him because they always had. He was in no danger and that had soothed Baze a little, enough to convince himself that it was better if he did not try to contact him, did not call him home.

Even though he had wanted to. Had wanted it so much that he thought his heart would catch fire in his chest from the feeling. 

So the sight of Chirrut there, lingering, quiet, seems very much like something that has no place in the real world at all, and Baze wonders how far the Force will take the punishment, how much it will torture him. Not that he blames it. He deserves it, after all, for everything that he lacks, but he does wish that it had decided on something else, another method, another form of driving him slowly mad across the expanse of time. Though he is also somewhat, sadly, glad because the ghost of Chirrut Imwe might be better than not having him at all. Maybe. Perhaps. He will see. There is time enough, he figures, time between now and whenever the Empire decides to wipe the last vestiges of the Whills out of the holy city forever. There is time enough. 

Until the mirage speaks, and everything that Baze thought he knew about the situation comes crashing to the ground at his feet. 

When Chirrut speaks--his face a careful mask but cracking at the edges, sticking, chipping away, which Baze can understand because he has walked into a place that he once called home to find it desecrated and altogether different, altogether empty and lonely and barren, altogether gone, a place that is no longer a home anymore but some in-between thing, some nightmare thing torn from between worlds and dropped here to lure in passersby with its mystery, with its careful rendition of something once known, once dear--the words are instantly ones that Baze knows. He should know them because he spent hours copying them down painstakingly, over and over again, until he was sure that his penmanship was good enough, until the strokes of the brush against the paper contained as much of him as they could, so that Chirrut could look on them, read them, and feel as though it was Baze speaking the borrowed turns of phrase. “ _*Yours is the light by which my spirit’s born: yours is the darkness of my soul’s return--you are my sun, my moon, and all my stars.*_ ”

You are my Force, Baze had wanted to add in the margins, his own contribution to the love poem, but he stopped himself, stilled his fingers before they could go too far. You have never known how to be, he thinks, anything other than too much or not enough at all. Both ways of being are disappointing. Both ways of being are painful. 

There is something in Chirrut’s face that Baze cannot identify, and he wonders at how time has changed them both. He wonders if he could still pull sighs of laughter and moans from Chirrut with well placed kisses and lingering touches. As it is, he is stuck, hands still holding stone, face turned to the vision in front of him, resplendent and perfect in robes, while his own are tattered, torn, burned at the edges. He wonders if Chirrut still smells the same or if he has taken on the new scents of the worlds he visited. He wonders if Chirrut would still know all his thoughts in the dark, still press his hands to the planes of his back to smooth it all away. He is surprised that Chirrut has not flown at him to crash against him in love or hate, to press kisses to his neck or knock him onto the ground, foot on his chest, furious. 

“Baze,” Chirrut says, and there is a waver there, a small, sad little hitch that Baze has only ever heard infrequently, but he remembers it. He remembers everything. It is another one of his burdens. “Am I still?”

He finds he cannot answer, puts the stones down, folds his hands in his lap and just looks. Looks like this is the last time he will ever be allowed to look, notes how things have changed about Chirrut’s appearance. Not big things, he has not been gone that long, but smaller, subtle alterations. Always, he wants to say, but he is worried about what that would mean. If he is still, if he is quiet, if he lies by omission because it is difficult for him to lie any other way, maybe Chirrut will leave again, maybe Chirrut will find somewhere that is safe if anywhere in the universe is safe anymore. I cannot protect you. I could not protect the temple, and I cannot protect you. 

“Baze.”

“You wouldn’t look at me.” He says, the old hurt, that moment, that last kiss, rising to the forefront of his mind. You are better than this, he chides himself because that was long ago and there are so many more pressing matters at hand. The first, of course, is getting Chirrut away from all this devastation before it burrows into his bones, before it wraps its tendrils around his arms and legs and keeps him there. 

They are both stubborn, both statues made of their own types of stone. Chirrut is kyber, blazing and blue at the tips, furious, a prism that paints glittering rainbows across every surface when the light shines through, precious and rare and powerful. Baze is sandstone, rust and yellow and brown, common and durable but weathered by the wind and the rain over time, good for structures, not very powerful, not very rare, not very valuable, but still able to support a great amount of weight. So they stand and they stare at each other as though waiting for the ground to shift, as though waiting for a sign from outside of themselves that will move them. 

It is Chirrut who runs out of patience first. It is Chirrut who hammers down the steps quickly, robes billowing out behind him, face impossibly lovely but tight, eyes almost slits and mouth a line. (Oh, Baze would die a thousand times to run his fingers over that line just one more time.) It is Chirrut who hits the ground almost running, who slams his knees into the dirt so that they are face to face, where Baze cannot hide himself because Chirrut will see everything pouring out of his eyes, trailing up into the air like smoke signals, capturing them before the meaning can be blown out into the sands by the winds.

“You wouldn’t come.” It is not the accusation that Baze had expected it to be, but it hurts all the same because there is pain in the words. “You wouldn’t come, and you wouldn’t ask me to stay. You acted like it meant nothing. And then you left that fucking book,” his voice breaks but he continues, “in my bag. For me to find. Later.”

Baze’s hands are dirty. They are covered in sand and clay and dirt. They are covered in calluses and dry and scraped from working with the stones. Logically he knows that they are hands not meant to touch Chirrut, but this knowledge does not stop him from reaching out to brush his thumbs over Chirrut’s cheeks, the contact enough to send a pleasant little shudder down his spine, to leave him wanting more, wanting everything he once had back. He finds his voice in the touch. “Chirrut, I’m sorry if you thought. Of course it meant something. It meant everything.” 

_my sun, my moon, and all my stars_

Enough stars to fill the universe from one end to the other, enough stars to light up everything hiding in the thick, in the void of shadows between one planet and the next. And Baze knows that this is not quite how it all works, not in the particulars of the thing, not in the theory. Yet it is how love works, which is the only thing that has ever mattered when it comes to how he feels about Chirrut. When it comes to loving Chirrut, he has never been sensible, never been calm, always been rash and aching and yearning even when he didn’t have a name to put to the feeling, even when he didn’t know what to do or how to behave.

Chirrut catches one of his wrists and holds on with so much strength that Baze wonders if Chirrut thinks he is the mirage. “I know that. I knew that the instant I read that book. And I was furious that you never said it. If you had said it, I would have.” He cuts himself off, sighs, shakes his head angrily as though this is not what he had wanted to say at all, as though this recitation of what has passed, what has escaped them, doesn’t matter in the end. Maybe it doesn’t. Though they will have to pull those bags out someday, unpack them, shake the dust from the cloth and go over them, piece by piece, until it’s sorted. That day does not have to be today.

“Baze, still?”

There is that shudder again, that questioning, and Baze wonders at that. He wants to ask about it, he wants to pry it open and drink it, see if it will quench his throat that seems to have been parched since the moment that Chirrut left, since that last kiss on the cheek, that first major failure. You were always so certain of everything, he thinks, thumb still sliding over Chirrut’s cheek, the barest hint of contact, fearful of going too far. You were always so certain, you always knew what you wanted, always grabbed it with both hands and held fast. I never thought I would hear you sound unsure of anything.

But, then, the universe is unsure right now. It is shaky and unstable and cracking like an egg. There is no more temple. There are no more bells that peal in the morning and in the evening to call him to prayers. There are no more initiates under foot. There are no more steady days of kyber cutting or sparring or weeding or cooking or cleaning. All the faithful patterns of Baze’s life have been erased as if they never were, though he remembers them and not just in his mind, but in his hands and his heart and his soul. His fingers can go through the motions of weaving without a loom or cloth present. Everything is burned into the fibers of himself, and all he has to do is call them out, let them out. Falling into steady rhythms has always been easy for him.

And when he kisses Chirrut, wondering, hoping that their Venn diagrams of wanting overlap again, his body remembers all the motions that they spent years discovering. Chirrut crawls into his lap, heavier and broader and more finely toned that he remembers him ever being before, a kyber weapon whose tongue traces over his lips until he opens them, until the kiss turns deep and desperate, until it becomes a black hole that Baze would gladly fall into. His heart is thudding when he pulls away, when he takes the first deep breath that he thinks he has been able to catch in forever. 

Chirrut presses their foreheads together, eyes closed, hands wrapped so tightly in Baze’s robes that Baze can see that his knuckles are white and straining with the force. He wants to tell him to loosen his grip, but the words won’t come, he gets lost, eyes skating over the planes of Chirrut’s face, identifying all the little changes, cataloging them so that he can trace his lips over them later. Impatient, Chirrut butts his forehead into Baze’s with a small thunk. “You haven’t answered me.”

It would be easy to say still. It would be easy to take that small road, to admit what seems a minor, lesser sort of acknowledgment. Yet that is not enough, and Baze has had his fill of always coming up wanting. So instead he says what he feels, the totality of it for once. “Always,” he says, and the sound that Chirrut makes is so haughty and so pleased and so altogether perfectly him that Baze has to capture his mouth again and drink it down into his own lungs until stars burst behind his eyelids.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [Tumblr](http://sarkastically.tumblr.com/).


End file.
